The Seed Market, Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks with Joan Moyne)
The Seed Market
Can you find another market like this?
Where,
with your one rose
you can buy hundreds of rose gardens:
Where,
for one seed
you get a whole wilderness?
For one weak breath,
the divine wind?
You’ve been fearful
Of being absorbed in the ground,
or drawn up by the air.
Now, your waterbead lets go
and drops into the ocean,
where it came from.
It no longer has the form it had,
but it’s still water.
The essence is the same.
This giving up in not a repenting.
It’s a deep honouring of yourself.
When the ocean comes to you as a lover.
marry, at once, quickly,
for God’s sake.
Don’t postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.
No amount of searching
will find this.
A perfect falcon, for no reason,
has landed on your shoulder,
and become yours.